U.S.-Russia Cooperation on Afghanistan: An Exception or a Model?

Long before the tragic events of September 2001, Afghanistan presented one of the rare cases of U.S.-Russia active bilateral cooperation on a regional security problem. This intensifying cooperation on Afghanistan ranked as a notable exception in the general context of troubled relations between the two states in key issue areas ranging from strategic arms control to human rights to regional conflict management, especially in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and in the post-Soviet space, where the list of disagreements sometimes seemed to be even broader than during the Cold War. The forms of U.S.-Russia cooperation on Afghanistan were varied: including pressure to force the Taliban, the country’s de facto government, to change its policies on terrorism and narcotics; UN sanctions; and a bilateral working group with a focus on terrorist threats coming from Afghanistan. Even prior to September 2001 and the political and military aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States, this atypical cooperation on a regional security problem had provoked both political and academic interest as to the factors that were wielding major influences on this process. […]

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